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Flaherty, Day Three

A shorter day at documentary bootcamp yesterday; I only caught the beginning of the evening session, as I wanted to get home and relax a bit. The films are amazing, but the pace is intense, and I needed a bit more downtime.

If there’s anything to be said of yesterday — a very weepy day in the theater — it’s that I think we’ve turned a corner, from unrelieved death and destruction, through exhuming the dead, to tales of escape and survival. (Suite for Freedom is a project of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.) I’m thinking — or maybe hoping — that we must be on an upswing. Last night’s crowd at the evening screening was much rowdier than they had been previously, which I attribute to the catharsis produced by the Kindertransport film, a far more traditional, mainstream, big-budget documentary than anything else we’ve seen. So I’m heading into today in a guardedly optimistic fashion, looking forward to seeing what’s next.